Wireless communication and reality mining as a reflection of pervasive consciousness

Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and other wireless modalities of transmitting data through computers and modems, printers and other peripherals are expanding. Wireless connection won't be the only information post on the territory. Reality mining is the term coined by MIT Media Lab that sums up the various objects that can be transformed in data spots through tiny radio-connected sensor chips.

The appeal of wireless is not just avoiding messy cables or the convenience of being able to connect to the Net anywhere. Wireless spots have an impact on our psyche as well. They give the impression of conscious, almost alive presences spreading across the world. A net of infinite eyes and pervasive awareness where all is one and interconnected. [/en][it]

Computers are definitely going wireless. Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and other wireless modalities of transmitting data through computers and modems, printers and other peripherals are expanding. Towns are installing thousands of wireless antennas in order to have a tight grid of spots where people can access the Internet from any location; in a few years we will wirelessly connecting any high-tech tool with each other and with the Net both at home and outside.

Wireless connection won't be the only information post on the territory. Reality mining is the term coined by MIT Media Lab that sums up the various objects that can be transformed in data spots through tiny radio-connected sensor chips. In the July/August 2007 issue of Technology Review, the main article titled Second Earth lists them as "everything worth monitoring, including bridges, ventilation systems, light fixtures, mousetraps, shipping pallets, battlefield equipment, even the human body".

The appeal of wireless is not just avoiding messy cables or the convenience of being able to connect to the Net anywhere. Wireless spots have an impact on our psyche as well. They give the impression of conscious, almost alive presences spreading across the world. The wireless points suit the Cartesian dream of thoughts without a body, of pure thoughts without a physical medium. In this regard, wireless spot "intelligences" are the logical consequence of the development of our western scientific and technological approach.

At the same time the wireless objects packed with information and software resemble something from the higher levels of a mystical reality where the universe is alive and conscious and where the thought-sphere is everywhere and not confined to the human mind. Reminds a net of infinite eyes and pervasive awareness where all is one and interconnected.

I observed that through our technological achievements humans unconsciously attempt to produce realms that emulate more advanced psychological and spiritual levels of human development, levels that can't be reached by the conceptual mind. What is achieved through technology is a simulation of the mystical conditions of a global mind that pervades the universe. The longing toward rejoining with the global mind is felt by every human being, but when we still identify ourselves with our individual ego and mind, we can't abandon those and be embraced by a wider mind. Nonetheless we unconsciously perceive a faint echo of the spiritual global realms and we construct through technology a simulated reflection of a pervasive conscious universe. This pale reflection on the technological level won't threaten our individual ego, still not ready to melt with the global consciousness.

Mystics always said that thoughts aren't produced by the mind/brain, but that the organ just picks up what's already available in the thought-sphere, as U.G. Krishnamurti says:

Thought is not yours or mine; it is our common inheritance. There is no such thing as your mind and my mind. There is only mind – the totality of all that has been known, felt, and experienced by man, handed from generation to generation. We are all thinking and functioning in that "thought sphere", just as we all share the same atmosphere for breathing. The thoughts are there to function and communicate in this world sanely and intelligently. […] Where are the thoughts located? They are not in the brain. Thoughts are not manufactured by the brain. It is, rather, that the brain is like an antenna, picking up thoughts on a common wavelength, a common thought-sphere. U.G. Krishnamurti. Mind is a Myth. Dinesh Publications. Goa.

Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are in this regard a metaphor of global, non localized consciousness: a net of active data that communicate with each other. With our tools we can pick up and filter the information circulated by these sources, in this way feeling connected to the global thought-sphere.

Science considers the brain as the place where thoughts are formed and consciousness is created. Instead, Nisargadatta Maharaj, as many other mystics, experimented first hand the reality of the ocean of consciousness:

You are so accustomed to think of yourselves as bodies having consciousness that you just cannot imagine consciousness as having bodies. Once you realize that bodily existence is but a state of mind, a movement in consciousness, that the ocean of consciousness is infinite and eternal, and that, when in touch with consciousness, you are the witness only, you will be able to withdraw beyond consciousness altogether. Nisargadatta Maharaj. I Am That. Acorn Press. Durham. 1982.

While for Nisargadatta Maharaj and other mystics consciousness is the main substance of the universe and bodies are included as part of the global consciousness, for Descartes and current scientists consciousness is just located in the mind, and bodies are just considered as trouble for pure thoughts. In the mystics' point of view, consciousness is pervasive and can even happen in a body-mind. In Descartes' view bodies and the material world are defined as things of a different nature from consciousness.

Descartes himself had truly a mystical view of life but he had to compromise with the Church of his time so he left to the church the monopoly on faith and conscience. What has been passed on by Descartes wasn't his spirituality but the pillars of the scientific method and the so-called body-mind split.

Since consciousness is ubiquitous I am not surprised that the seat of human consciousness is so elusive to neuroscientists that look for it mainly in the brain.

Hi Greg, welcome here. I saw your nice art and south of India has a special daylight that helps creativity. regarding your question, I don’t know if it’s a common understanding, my reflections come from having been involved for many years in computer technology and then in meditation (Osho, Almaas and other teachings), then in both, then I lost meditation then I am recovering both in a new light. Have a nice time there, I miss India a bit.

[…] The questions raised by Ivo in his superbly crafted articles (indeed, they go beyond the scope of just posts) beg the reader to examine his/her place before the computer, the TV, the blackberry or bluetooth. Can you go a bit deeper and think about words like anonymity, global consciousness, and social networking in the context of this paragraph from Wireless communication and reality mining as a reflection of pervasive consciousness: […]